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Saasyan & Palo Alto Networks  Helping Schools Keep Their Network Secure & Their Students Safe

Saasyan And Palo Alto Networks Firewall protecting schools together

Saasyan Assure And Palo Alto Networks Firewall  Addressing Critical Requirements For K-12


The internet and other networking technologies have improved the efficiency and richness of the learning experience in many schools. However, the risks of potential network misuse or security breaches have also increased substantially, affecting
resources and costs for Information Communication Technology (ICT) staff.

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls provide industry-leading SSL decryption, signature-based application control, user identification, web filtering, and threat intelligence capabilities.

Without these, schools have limited visibility into network threats and applications in use, and no granular control over web content students can access and distribute.

These are great for network security and access control but insufficient for ensuring student wellbeing. After all, Next-Generation Firewalls aren’t designed to surface students who are looking up suicide hotlines or getting constantly cyberbullied.

This is where Saasyan Assure comes into the picture.

Palo Alto Networks Firewall And Saasyan Tackling Online Safety Challenges Of Schools

Saasyan's approach to student safety & wellbeing is fundamentally different from other vendor's solutions. Saasyan has not attempted to reinvent the wheel by developing its own web filter and has instead focused on adding industry-best student safety and wellbeing capability to the industry-leading Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall through K-12 centric reporting, alerting, and self-service web override capabilities.

Saasyan Assure adds student safety & wellbeing capabilities to Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls. Alerts and reporting allow schools to act before incidents occur, halting damage and saving lives. Assure makes reporting and classroom control simple and intuitive, saving schools both time and effort.

Thanks to deep integration with the PAN-OS® API, Assure enables schools to align and set access to the tools and the data non-ICT staff need to ensure students’ cyber well-being.

This makes it possible for schools to proactively safeguard students from inappropriate online content, promote good digital citizenship and protect students from cyberbullying and self-harm while maintaining a modern and engaging learning environment.

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What Does Palo Alto Networks Firewall Do?

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls offer a prevention-focused architecture that is easy to deploy and operate. Automation reduces manual effort so your security teams can replace disconnected tools with tightly integrated innovations, focus on what matters and enforce consistent protection everywhere.

Next-Generation Firewalls inspect all traffic, including all applications, threats, and content, and tie that traffic to the user, regardless of location or device type. The user, application, and content—the elements that run your business—become integral components of your enterprise security policy. As a result, you can align security with your business policies as well as write rules that are easy to understand and maintain.

The Benefits For Schools

Saasyan Assure adds K-12-friendly reporting, classroom control, and pastoral care features to Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls. This integration allows schools to go beyond Layer 7 in their mission to protect their students and network from the dangers of the online world, with no compromises.

Saasyan Assure adds student safety and wellbeing capabilities to Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls. Alerts and reporting allow schools to act before incidents occur, halting damage and saving lives. Assure makes reporting and classroom control simple and intuitive, saving schools both time and effort.

Palo Alto and Saasyan Integration

How Can Schools Keep An Eye On The Online Activity Of Students Deemed To Be At Risk Of Self-harm?

Through industry-leading signature-based application control, user identification, and web filtering capabilities, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls allow students access to only applications and websites sanctioned by the school. The firewalls also perform SSL decryption on selected traffic.

Assure analyses log and packet capture data from the Next-Generation Firewalls to allow schools to act before incidents occur. It does this by:

  1. Continuously scanning web searches performed, streaming content accessed, and chat messages sent and received by these students.
  2. Identifying activities that are indicative of self-harm.
  3. Notifying the school’s staff about these activities.

How Can Schools Recognise And Promote Good Digital Citizenship Among Students?

With industry-leading web filtering and user identification capabilities, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls provide granular logs on the sites accessed and applications used by each and every student. Saasyan Assure uses these logs to calculate each student’s web and cyber rating on a daily basis and highlights the students at risk. Schools can also allow students to log on to Assure for visibility into their own internet usage.

How Can Teachers Allow Access To Certain Online Content Without Relying On The ICT Team?

Self-service firewall and web filter management allow teachers and non-ICT staff to grant temporary access to online content that’s normally blocked, allowing teaching activities to continue unimpeded. Integration with leading Learning Management Systems allows access to be controlled within an LMS. Assure leverages the feature-rich Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS API to allow non-technical staff to perform these tasks on-demand and in a self-service manner.

Alerts And Reporting Allow Schools To Act Before Incidents Occur

The integration enables K-12-centric reporting and alerting, allowing schools to act before incidents occur. School staff can subscribe to alert notifications to get informed when students attempt to access inappropriate websites and videos, use potentially dangerous search keywords, or are involved in negative social media activity. Artificial intelligence built into Assure helps teachers by automatically categorising abusive content.

Designed for ease-of-use by teachers, well-being professionals and other school staff. The ready-to-use reports quickly and simply display the websites and applications the students are accessing and the searches they are performing. 

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About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, is shaping the cloud-centric future with technology that is transforming the way people and organizations operate. Palo Alto's mission is to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. They help address the world’s greatest security challenges with continuous innovation that seizes the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, analytics, automation, and orchestration.

By delivering an integrated platform and empowering a growing ecosystem of partners, they are at the forefront of protecting tens of thousands of organizations across clouds, networks, and mobile devices. Their vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before.

About Saasyan

Saasyan is a leader in AI-Powered Student Safety and Wellbeing solutions, serving the K-12 education market globally.

We enable schools to detect and intervene against student cyberbullying, self-harm, suicide & threats of violence and terror.

Today we are ensuring the safety and wellbeing of over 400,000 school children and teachers across 600 government and non-government schools.

Saasyan applies advanced analytics and AI to monitor, alert and report across all student digital activities, including in chat, email, search, websites, social posts and videos.

Our cloud-based software-as-a-service solution integrates and leverages data and technologies already deployed by schools such as identity management systems, next-generation firewalls and productivity platforms including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. We then apply multiple levels of intelligence including a crowd-sourced words and phrases dictionary, fuzzy logic, natural language processing and cohort analysis to determine context and identify high-risk outliers in student behaviour.

Saasyan’s automated alerts and on-demand reports enable wellbeing counsellors to detect and respond to high-risk student behavioural and emotional indicators early, safeguard students across all their digital interactions and deliver on their student duty of care responsibilities.

At Saasyan, student safety and wellbeing is at the heart of our existence.

Our mission has just begun.